Tuesday, March 8, 2016

If you've noticed my absence from these pages, it's not due to lack of interest on my part by any means. On Feb 1 I took a dive on some uneven sidewalk pavement and fractured my left hip. Thinking it was just bruises, I hobbled on it for nearly two weeks, finally givng up and getting the verdict from Kaiser Permante. I underwent partial hip replacement surgery on Feb. 16 and am now a hipper person for it.

Ju Ju

My recuperation and rehab is going well, but is maddeningly slow, and I'm chomping at the bit to get back on the noodle trail. Fortunately, I've got some good Ju Ju working for me. That would be my long-suffering wife Rujuan (JuJu) who loves to whip up a bowl of tang mian, ban mian or chao mian at a moment's notice. One particularly solicitous offering was her "pork bone soup," pictured above, which is guaranteed to repair my poor old bones quickly. The development of stock from long-simmered pork bones (often ncck bones, but any bone-in cut of pork can be used) is something the Chinese have been doing for centuries before the Japanese discovered ramen, It's no smarmy tonkotsu broth; Ju Ju takes care to minimize the fattiness and saltiness, and the addition of potatoes is a Shanghai thing.

Who's knocking?

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About Me

Gary Soup is the nom de l'écran of Gary Stevens, a blogger, tweeter and sometimes poster to foodie web sites, usually blathering about Chinese food. He is a retired transport planner with an abiding interest in all aspects of Asian and other ethnic foods and their place in the world. He is married to a Shanghainese women who happens to be a good cook and consequently is well-grounded in Shanghainese "jia chang" cuisine. He is based in San Francisco, but spends as much time as he can in Shanghai and New York and can sometimes be seen prowling the streets of Montreal. He is the author of two articles on food in the guidebook "Urbanatomy: Shanghai" and has been a guest blogger for the Asian Art Museum on the food of Shanghai. He currently maintains two Blogger blogs, and posts to flickr and Instagram. Some earlier online efforts of Mr. Soup drift about the World Wide Web as cyberspace debris.